The first item on our list of things to do, next to popular D.C. attractions such as “visit the Arlington Cemetery,” “tour the Smithsonian” and “catch a Nationals game,” is a simple three-word phrase: “get a job.”

In a city that houses more than half a million people, this is easier said than done.

To make matters worse, being here only for the summer means any work I’m looking for is temporary. And since I’m too nice to lie to potential employers, this means I’m not just looking for work, I’m going to wave goodbye in two-and-a-half months.

Despite my desperation, I remained picky about my job prospects. One of my roommates, a former journalist, works at a hardware store in town, and mentioned they were hiring. I scoffed to myself, as if she were trying to get me to work in a McDonald’s. I’m a writer, I thought. I’m a journalist. This work is below me.

So I sent feeler emails out to bookstores (I’m not sure how working at a bookstore is anymore glamorous than a job at a hardware store) and submitted resumes to colleges and organizations looking for English tutors.

I got no responses back on tutoring jobs, which both surprised me and left me slightly outraged, as if I deserved a job with one of these places simply by existing. I have three years of teaching experience, the angry, arrogant, idiotic part of me wants to tell them. And on top of that, two years of experience tutoring in a writing lab! And you’re gonna brush me off?

Needless to say, it was a humbling experience.

The job search is as competitive as you’d think it’d be, and as I walk from business to business, I try not to dwell on the depressing fact that I have become the stereotypical starving artist — a man with a master’s degree begging for work, any work, to help pay the bills.

But, given the current state of the economy, I probably shouldn’t feel too bad. This is a situation that has become the norm in Washington, an area populated with overqualified workers working jobs outside of their intended field.

But I did get a reply back from one of the bookstores, which gave me a modicum of hope, even though our correspondence dropped off after I responded to his first message. I had emailed the businesses in the month leading up to our departure to the capital, so I remained optimistic, planning to stop by once we got into the city and meet with the manager face-to-face.

“I mentioned you to my boss today,” my roommate said one morning as I ready myself to head to the bookstore.

“Oh?” I say, feigning interest.

“Yeah. He said they’re hiring for the summer. I put in a good word for you. You should put in an application.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to do that. What was the website again?” I ask, knowing full well what the website was.

I tuck the hardware store in the back of my mind as I ride the Metro to the store, where I speak with the manager and secure an interview. At this point, I’ve convinced myself I’m going to be hired at the store. Of course I should’ve known better, but I was drunk on the moment. I went in for the interview a couple of days later, and thought it went well, up until the interviewer stood up from the table and shook my hand.

“We’re still kind of caught up on the temporary part,” he said. “But we’ll let you know.”

Job searches are a lot like the early stages of dating, especially in their methodology: you engage the person, show interest, and then lay low for a couple of days to see if that interest is reciprocated.

I should’ve known then that I wasn’t going to get the job, but a part of me — the same part that would’ve held out hope that a junior high crush liked me back — still convinced me there was a chance. He said he’ll let me know, I thought, the equivalent of a junior high crush asking me if I had any looseleaf paper.

I waited next to phone and computer, checking my email and biting my fingernails, let down approximately 50 times a day by the spam that inundated my inbox. Like dating, looking for a job is a way of validating yourself, of being evaluated by someone you don’t know and wanting to be found worthy. The disinterest of strangers probably shouldn’t bother me, but it does.

Meanwhile, I applied at the hardware store, took part in a phone interview, and met with the manager. This waiting game ended in a call Tuesday afternoon from the manager, offering me a job. “That is, if you’re still interested,” he said.

“Oh, I’m interested,” I said. “I’m very interested.”

I didn’t go back by the bookstore, but if I had, I would’ve regarded the store smugly, the same way I would look at the junior high crush as I walked past her with my arm around another girl. Look at what you’re missing out on, that look said. Four years of customer service experience, three of that in management positions.

I might have looked down on the job initially, but I realized now that I should be happy to work any job at the nation’s capital. And it’s not like it’s humiliating work — it’s interacting with people, something I’ve learned to do continuously over the past six years. My co-workers seem down-to-earth, and I think I’ll fit in just fine.

Even if it was a bad job, I should be happy to get whatever I can get. I never was good at talking to girls.